A brush with death brought one's life in a flash. Death itself did as well. I'd danced with the infinite often.

Bits and pieces that I'd forgotten would get dragged along with the good memories as well. As there were few cherished recollections in my human days and, admittedly, just a few in my years as a fairy, the flashing of my life was brief, and the nightmare of everything I'd selectively forgotten but could not hold back repeated before my eyes.

That was how I knew I was dying now.

Beyond the black, there was chaos, screaming and confusion. I did not recall how I got into the tunnel, only that the packed dirt at my back meant that was where I was.

I did not understand the princess's screams.

However, I did recognize the elf king's voice. "He's the fairy king. He deserves no better."

"Ogres," another squeaky elf voice warned.

"You! You brought ogres upon me."

He couldn't have meant me. I'd never dealt with ogres. They were good in a fight but difficult to control. Besides, they only answered...to the fairy queen.

"I did not summon ogres," the princess said. Her voice broke up then faded and I lost all sense of time.

What was happening? Try as I might, I could recall nothing beyond the cages that held us. What had happened? The elf king ordered us cut down...and then...and then what?

Perhaps opening my eyes would bring clarity. My gut burned but what I witnessed upon fighting through the pain to look around me with something beyond my imagination.

It was the biggest ogre I'd ever seen. Ogres were massive usually, but this one fit underground so it must have shrunken down. Despite that fact, his proportions boggled the mind. "He's alive," his deep voice boomed. He looked back at someone. "What do I do with him?"

The princess hurried to reach me. "Can you heal him? He's been run through."

Little by little feeling returned to my body and I realized she was right. Leaning back against the wall, I clutched a shard of glass lodged in my stomach.

I did not remember how it got there or by whom. But I did recognize the slow hand of death bitterly crawl over me.

"It won't work. My magic's not enough," the ogre said.

"Wyrn...." The princess gasped then said, "We must save him."

Wyrn.

My blurred vision afforded me fewer skills of deduction for every last bit of my magic was keeping me on this plane rather than allowing me to travel to the great beyond. And yet—and yet I forced myself to waste some of that magic now.

Was this Wyrn? Because when I blinked, I didn't see just an ogre. I saw three forms. Beyond the ogre looking back, demanding an order, was a human. But when the brute turned to face me again, I saw something even more astonishing—inside that human inside the ogre...was a fairy. A strong one.

Wyrn. So this was Wyrn?

Time stood still. When I came back to reality again, two gentle hands dragged me.

"Out of my way." It sounded like the princess, but I didn't recognize the tone. Such aggression was nothing like her. We moved at top speed. How, I did not know. I began questioning whether this was a memory rather than real-life experience.

And then there was black.

The next time I came to, it was to find someone crying over me.

"You can't die. Aren't you supposed to be immortal?"

Aye. But it wasn't this stab wound killing me...it was Manoj.

Nothing held me in this form. I felt untethered, swinging from left to right, slipping deeper.

Death.

Now, I was the one cold.

No. Not again. Never again.

I will give her back to you. I swear it. Deep in me, I continued to plea as the sense of touch slipped away. Please. I swear it. My loyalty is only to you. I am faithful to my vow to serve you. And I will bring this fairy queen to you. You have my word, but please...please don't let me die. Don't replace me. I've been true until now. Please.

I'd lost nearly all sense of touch until something caught me. Demanding, Bring her to me. Now.

Yes. Of course. Restore me. I will bring her. I swear.

Something yanked me by the chest, turned and threw me up out of the black. My body sprung to life. It was a scream to follow after that, but not mine—and not one.

Little by little, feeling came back into me but something pressed me down. That was to say, someone, using both hands, pushed against my gut.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please don't go. Don't go like this. I'm sorry."

And on and on she went.

"I don't even know how to save you. I'm so sorry. Aren't I supposed to save you! I'm sorry."

I wasn't sure what to do. No one had ever cried over me before. Two thousand years of memories came and went, and none showed anyone clinging to me, begging me to live. In fact, several occasions had someone holding on to my bloodied form, praying for the exact opposite.

Death by a mortal means was fine. It meant a rebirth. This time, it was something different. I'd felt...different. Manoj had threatened to let me go, to unanchor me from the tree of life so that I floated in an abyss.

The terror of it sent a shiver through me. But was it sick of me...and utterly sick of me...to find relief if not solace in the princess's greeting?

Even now, despite me drawing breath, she still wept while apologizing. I would have called it a trance had I not known better.

But as she carried on, those somber cries turned into something else. Face pressed against my chest, she screamed against me. Her slender frame trembled.

It was worry for her why I stroked up her torso then held her neck.

All thoughts of speaking vanished because when I thought to try, something came from my throat. I turned my head and coughed up, not one, but three fully charged hearthstones.

I stared down at them, rather pleased. That memory of how I'd gotten them came back.

It was not the most charming display, but it caught the princess's attention.

Her lips hung open as she stared at me, disbelieving my healed condition. She pulled her bloodied hands down to bare witness to the scar, slowly mending still. If she did not believe in the magic of Manoj, surely she had when even the blood on her hands faded little by little until all traces of my injury amounted to nothing but a scar in my stomach.

I was well.

Despite the fact, pearls of tears gathered in her eyes and shed yet again. She dragged me up, mounted my lap, and clung to me, refusing to budge.

Considering where I'd just been, I was content to allow the embrace as well. I needed the comfort.

I also needed to formulate a way back to Manoj.

After a long silence, she said, "Why couldn't I heal you? Teach me how to heal you."

I tightened my hold, genuinely touched but the gentle approach had to end, and it had to end now.

"I can no more teach you how to wield your power, Majesty, than the sun teach the moon how to bring in the tide."

She moved closer against me, her grip so tight that I feared for my life yet again. I didn't mind it, however, so I continued holding her around the waist.

"Come. We have fully functioning hearthstones. Hold one."

She buried her face in my neck, refusing to even acknowledge my great bounty.

"Come now. Just hold one."

"I can feel them from here," she muttered.

Perhaps that were true, because she did move better and her skin wasn't as clammy as before.

Her tears soaked my neck again but after some time, she sat back finally. My focus had been so steadily on her and my own taste of mortality that I hardly took our whereabouts in. Not only were we back in the snow enclave housing my shield and her fur coat, but no less than ten glow stones illuminated us. Perhaps from the sky, we stuck out, but I hardly cared about that right now.

Instead, I brushed her hair back, saddened by the anguish etched into her grimace.

She traced the scar, then slid her hand up to press her left palm against my chest.

"Is it all right that it's beating so frantic?" she asked.

It was more than all right.

My concern lay elsewhere—the scar above her left breast had no hearthstone in it this time, but I could look nowhere else.

Brown eyes exploring my face, she kept hold of my hand and guided it to her chest.

"Does it hurt?" I asked.

She didn't answer. Of my own volition, I eased from her grip and pressed my fingertips to her golden skin. I didn't know when I started making circles. In mere seconds, I traced her nipple then held her breast entirely. They were hefty but firm.

A gasp left her, and I stopped.

For a long minute, I could not look away from where I held, nor could I look at her.

"Why do you hesitate...?"

Those words sobered me.

We watched one another, but my hand did not cease in fondling her. In fact, my right thumb made a circular pattern as I traced her nipple.

Determination shined in her gaze. I wonder what she found in mine.

"When—when was the last time, you were with a fairy queen?"

All my actions stopped. The last time.

I uprooted the cobwebs of my mind in search of a fitting boast in which to entice her. Some great conquest of me ravishing a fairy queen while she begged me to continue. And when I could find no such memory, I opened my mouth to lie.

So why did I say, "Long."

The tone of her gaze shifted. She no longer looked determined, but rather, thoughtful. Perhaps she was remembering her very powerful husband, finally. Wyrn—a fairy, turned human, turned into an ogre, and having access to all three forms of magic.

In the world of enchantments, few things were as curious as to the reputation of the fairy queen and king. She could do no wrong, and I no right. And to be fair, I hadn't done many honorable things. But there was one right that I could steel my pride—I remained with one bedfellow until either of us tired.

The same could not be said of the queen, so her actions now did not surprise me. However, the gentle way she caressed my face did.

Panicked, I thought to take my hand back, but she slipped her fingers down my torso and traced my navel. This was wrong. I should have stopped her. I'd meant to. A slight like this could not go an answered. Any woman visited by the Fae intimately could find pleasure with no other. That was true for all creatures, and yet, I could not answer my own question of whether or not the fairy queen fell under the same natural rules.

Even if she didn't, bedding the wife of a powerful being—while my own power stayed locked away—was unwise.

We should stop.

I certainly told myself to when she ran her fingertips up along my shaft, bringing what was once half-hearted and tentative to full fruition. I sat naked before her, trembling under her touch which stopped all of a sudden.

"Princess." I gasped, trying to counter our foolish actions.

But in seconds, she eased up, positioned herself, the stiffness of my member pressing against her wet crevasse. I regained my senses and warned, "Princess, we can't take this back or right this wrong."

Despite my length, guided me inside her without trouble. She was hot and tight, but I was too afraid to move.

"It's not wrong," she panted.

I longed to impale her. I more than wanted to.

"Princess," I panted back, struggling to explain the situation to her.

As she rode me with vigor, gripped her soft breasts tight. This wasn't languished or slow, but hungry and I could not counter her steady tempo. Soon enough, she froze up, arched back, and rolled her hips against me, savoring the feel of my rod inside her. It hadn't been enough, because she started moving again.

My body burned. I could barely last. I needed her—wanted to take her, but guilt weighed me down. What would this mean? She eased up; a chill reached my hard member as I slid out of her. I told myself to bury myself inside her yet again for warmth's sake. That was a lie.

But I thrust upward once, and she made a lovely sound.

How fulfilling it was savoring an ardent body. My only regret was my inability to fully participate. I should have put a stop to this. Countless times, again and again, I told myself this. And yet, as I released inside her, despite the erratic nature of my senses at the time, despite the danger of what her husband would do, I focused only on her words showering me praises for providing her this ecstasy. I was satisfied.

Satisfied and rested.

Now it was me burying my face in her neck, pleased. I almost died. I almost died without feeling this with her. So I did not mind risking death after we left this little sanctuary.

With her ardent body pressed against mine, the steady rhythm of her heart, I began to doubt myself; doubt my thoughts, my memories.

Perhaps I had imagined all of it.

Perhaps...I had imagined...Manoj.

My stomach sank, threatening to pull me out of this body yet again. The world came back to me, and I awoke...alone.

"Fool!" I cursed myself, for it had been a trick.

A fairy king shouldn't have had much remnants of a heart worth breaking, and yet, I felt that way. Without her body over mine, a chill filled my bones.

Fool. I had been a fool but so had she. The embers of the glow stones were all but gone now. Dawn would come soon.

Someone sniffed.

And there it was again. I picked my head up, scanning the dark. What I found surprised me.

The princess did not escape. In fact, she sat, knees pulled to her chest, as she wept. Her skin had dulled but I dragged her fur coat to her, more for peace of mind than any practicality.

I felt like so much scum when I sat.

"I will explain it to your husband," I began but she cut me off by hugging me.

This erratic behavior was confusing on many levels. "Princess...."

"What is happening to me?" she asked. When I did not answer, she let me go and revealed both arms, specifically, the vines and flowers growing there. "What's happened to me?"

All air left my body, but I could manage only one word. "No."